Top Hook (48 page)

“Fuck fuck fuck FUCK!”

“Alan!”

“Hurts like a son of a bitch. Mike, they're trying to get around the tower. I caught some movement to your, uh, east and west.”

“You okay?”

“Just go! Look!”

Dukas steeled himself before looking out the low arches on the south. Three men were moving along the edge of the rubble. The first disappeared to the west into the market even as Dukas raised his rifle.

Bang.

The last one dropped. The second one whirled and fired, a blaze of light and angry hornets all around him. Dukas stood his ground and the other man fired again and so did Dukas, simultaneous roars, and then the man was gone and the rifle was empty, its bolt back.
Short magazine
. He didn't have reloads. He put the rifle down on the stone roof carefully, as though it was something very valuable, and then he reached into his jacket for the revolver, and the tower moved.

Alan had his hand wrapped in lint and roughly taped. There was blood everywhere and he couldn't seem to get enough pressure on the hand to stop the spurts until he put a tourniquet on the brachial artery on the inside of the upper arm just above the elbow. That seemed to take forever. He heard Dukas fire from the building.

He had retreated into the shelter of the yard. When the blast came, it struck the open gate full on and crashed it back against its stops, the sound lost in the explosion. The slamming gate stopped within inches of his face, and the wave of smoke and noise dazed him. He shook his head, his ears ringing, and reached in the holster at his waist for his pistol. Then he worked the slide against his thigh. Alan had never been hit before, and he felt leaden with shock and fear. And worry: he hadn't heard Harry's gun for long minutes.

The Chinese had Shreed. The Chinese were trying to storm Dukas's tower.

He had reached a state where his muscles seemed to
be making decisions for him. While his mind was still thinking that he didn't have the energy or the will to find Harry, his legs had levered him to his feet and pushed him to the gate, which still hung straight. He shouldered it open to keep it between him and the square and ran the other way down the street. At the first crossway, he turned left without pausing to look up the alley. He could hear his feet distinctly, slapping on the packed earth in rhythm, even though his ears were still ringing. He wasn't even looking around and he thought, very clearly, “
I'm dead.”

He passed an opening to the left, back toward the square, and kept going west, trying to keep parallel to the men moving behind the tower. At the second turning, he stopped, straining for air, and looked to the south. This lane turned slightly to the west. It appeared to be empty in the moonlight. He moved off, jogging slowly along the left margin of the street, his mouth half-open in an attempt to quiet his breathing. His left hand hurt at every heartbeat and every step, and blood continued to pulse out of the bandage, drops falling to the ground as he went.

He thought this route would take him to the area behind the tower. If it didn't, he wasn't sure he'd make it back.

Ahead of him, the street suddenly opened into a wider space, and a small truck blocked his way. He crouched by the wheel and gasped for only a moment; then he leaned out around the hood. The tower was clear in the moonlight, rising from a row of market stalls at its base. Silent shapes were climbing through the stalls.

The blast extinguished sound, and the pillar of powdered rock and smoke that leaped up the north face of the
tower was answered by a second column of smoke that followed the trap door into the air. Dukas was thrown flat, and when he gained his knees he saw that the whole north wall of the top of the tower was gone. The big pistol was still in his hand. He swayed and thought of Shreed, still down in the dark at the base of the tower if the explosion hadn't killed him. He crabwalked across the roof to the empty hole that had been a trap door. Dust still rose through it, and with the dust, a sort of mewling like a young cat wanting food. It was dark down there.

Dukas gritted his teeth and lowered himself into the empty space by his hands, his feet kicking out for a ladder that was no longer there. It seemed easier to take his chances on the drop than to pull himself back on the exposed roof; he lowered himself to the full reach of his arms, tried not to think of how tall the tower was, and dropped into the dark.

It was farther and more disorienting than he had expected, and he landed clumsily, his right foot on something yielding, and he sprawled. Nothing broken. The little sound came to him again. The stairs in the wall were over to the left. He felt for the wall, didn't find it where he expected, and stumbled again.
He had a flashlight in his pocket.
The thought came to him from a distance, as if he had just remembered where his keys were in the midst of a frantic search. He pulled it out and turned the head until the beam illuminated the dark.

He wished he hadn't.

It didn't take a forensic expert to understand that the charge had blown a large piece off the inside of the tower, scattering shrapnel from the ancient stones in a concentrated cone. One body had its head severed just at the neck. The sound was coming from a boy, who
was lying at the head of the stairs with both of his feet gone, his blood flowing down a set of stone cataracts to pool at the bottom.

The child might live. Dukas whispered to him while he grabbed at stray bits of wreckage and came up with curtain cords that he used to bind his legs. His attempts seemed feeble and useless, his tourniquets like Band-Aids compared to the damage. The boy made inhuman sounds from his chest.

I brought this here.

He avoided the blood at the foot of the steps and turned the light on the door just as the shooting started again.

The shotgun roared to Alan's right, throwing one of the shapes back into a stall. A burst of return fire from the base of the tower gave him a target and he shot at the flashes, aiming low. The shotgun went off again, a sound like ripping canvas, and Alan's target crossed a beam of moonlight right in front of his sights and he fired, his right hand propped on the hood of the vehicle. Harry was methodically firing low into the lightly built stalls, forcing them to move.

The central stall was sturdier. It looked like a shed built of corrugated iron, and its roof ran back to the tower. At least one survivor was under it, firing steadily in short, disciplined bursts. Alan could see the light of the muzzle flash but not the shooter. He began to move out from behind the truck, his gun hand fully extended toward the target. Harry was silent, either hit or reloading. Alan moved to his left, toward the corner of the tower, keeping the corrugated iron stall between him and the shooter. When he reached the line of stalls, mangled by repeated hits, he began to move
along them toward the entrance to the iron stall. Then, to his relief, Harry fired again, this time at something on the other side of the market. Alan saw his flash as the shotgun roared. He waved his pistol and pointed at the central stall.

“I see you.” Harry's voice sounded clear across the market. The shooter in the stall fired at the voice. Harry fired again.

“There's another one at the other end,” he shouted. Alan froze, pointing his pistol into the moonshadows fifty feet away. He heard movement inside the main stall, which went all the way back to the tower. The shooter there was moving.

Alan moved too, first to his left again to get cover from the south end of the market, then straight to the wall of the warehouse. He heard scrabbling sounds, a wooden thud, and a single roaring shot, followed by silence. He moved as quietly as he could back down the warehouse toward its dark mouth. Then he looked around the corner with his right eye, toward the south end of the market. He lowered himself to his haunches and crouched, perfectly still, watching the darkness to his front. The shotgun roared again, and the thin fabric at the front of one of the south-side stalls shredded.

“Harry!”
That was Dukas's voice in the warehouse
.

“Mike! There's a guy in there!”

“Not any more.”

Alan flung a bolt of cotton out from his hiding place and it spun, unrolling a little, across the market. No fire greeted it.

Harry fired twice, aimed shots at the base of stalls.

Dukas stayed where he was.

“I think we're shooting at shadows,” called Harry.

Alan watched the dark.

“I'm crossing the square. Cover me.”

Alan pointed his pistol at the other side of the square, and Dukas materialized at the corner of the warehouse.

“Where's Harry?”

Alan's speech was slurred, and he spoke slowly.

“He's crossing the square. Maybe—shooter over here—”

Dukas held the big revolver in both hands and pointed it where Alan had indicated. Harry moved very quickly from cover to cover. Nobody fired.

The explosion had deafened Chen and half-buried him in debris. It took him time to extricate himself from the new wreckage piled on the old, and more time to clear his head. The sniper, however, was already up and moving. Shreed, lying behind the stone of the prayer screen, seemed untouched. He'd stopped screaming. Now he was talking to himself.

Chen raised his head, half expecting to be shot.

At first glance in the moonlight, the tower appeared untouched. Chen had to focus to see that the whole facade sagged in the middle. A deep gouge like a thumbmark in clay disappeared into shadows at the base. If the charge had blown a hole, however, it was too small for entry.

There was a burst of flickering light from the far side of the tower, like hidden fireworks. The noise of the firing took a moment to register.

“Sergeant! Report!”

“I'm at the door to the tower. They're all over the square.”

“Get inside!”

“—door.”

The sound of the shot and the noise from his headset told him the story.

“Sergeant!”

Chen looked back at the sniper, who was prone in a rubble pile, covering Chen's back.

“Report!” he demanded on the command channel.

Only silence responded.

Shreed was talking again. He said Chen's name several times. He started to talk about money, and Chen thought for a moment about how typical Shreed was of his kind. Dying, he didn't talk about God or revolution; he talked about money.

Then Chen began to understand what Shreed was saying.

The three men picked their way along the edge of the tower. Harry stopped to check the body at the corner, the one Dukas had shot from the tower. Dead. Harry took the dead man's machine pistol, searched him for ammunition, and handed it to Dukas, who looked over the gun, fitted a clip, and hung the sling over his shoulder. Alan stayed silent, leaning against the wall of the tower. He had refused to stay behind, and they had rebound his wrist and bandaged the wreck of his hand more carefully. While Harry took his time over the hand, Dukas kept looking to the east beyond the tower.

“Don't worry, Mike. They won't get away.” He had sounded very sure. Dukas hadn't asked any questions. He looked shellshocked.

Harry came to the southeast corner and stopped, looking south. Then he got down on hands and knees and looked carefully around the corner. He watched what little he could see of the square down the wall. Dukas thought that he was going to wait forever. Alan merely leaned against the wall, stolid as an animal heading for slaughter.

Harry turned the corner quickly and then moved close to the wall, still covered from the mosque by the tower's jutting corner. Dukas followed him closely, one hand on his back, Alan a little farther behind.

When they stopped at the last corner, Harry could hear Shreed talking, and a voice, higher in pitch, shouting in English. Harry froze and then sank into a crouch.

“Where! Where is the money?”

“All—gone. All gone.”

“What did you do with it?”

“I think—you'll be…happier—US of A.” Shreed's voice was weak, fading into murmurs, but it sounded happy.

“Bastard!”

Harry crept the last few feet and looked around the corner. He could see nothing but rubble. He kept moving. He could feel Dukas's hand on his back. He could hear Alan, another step behind. He was afraid that Alan was too far gone to bend over, that he would walk into a bullet like a zombie. He turned to look, and Dukas stepped right past him, half crouched, his whole attention focused on the voice.

“They'll kill—go…home.”

“I'll kill you right now! Traitor!”

“Fuck you, Chen.” Shreed's words were slow and distinct, as if they had been practiced many times. Harry had scrambled to keep up with Dukas, who stepped straight out of the shadow of the wall.

The sniper had heard the movement. His commander was oblivious, prattling in English, and he twisted as quietly as possible to change his front. He rolled to a crouch and moved in a long glide away from the northwest corner, where he had waited so long. In one
motion he raised his rifle to his eye and raised his body so that the muzzle appeared a few feet from Dukas.

When a shot from the darkness severed the sniper's spine, Dukas was sprayed with his blood. The sound of the shot lingered and echoed. Dukas crouched, stunned, and Chen spun and fired from a few meters away, knocking Dukas back into Harry. The shot hit his collarbone and turned in, plowing through the soft tissue and exiting at the back.

Alan raised his right arm like a duelist and brought the sight down one-handed. He leaned forward a little as Dukas fell. He shot once and Chen stumbled back, stepping on Shreed, and caught himself against the prayer screen. Chen raised his gun again and then flew forward as if kicked between the shoulders, to fall just in front of Shreed's head. There was a gaping hole in the back of his jacket and the body armor beneath.

Alan hugged one side of the doorway and looked over at Harry, flat against the opposite wall.

“Where did that come from?”